Should the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance be abolished?

[Redalgo]

The pledge is excessively nationalist and theist. While students are afforded the opportunity to opt out, doing so in practice is easier said than done for a student because their peers are oftentimes monstrous little conformists who may decide to associate non-compliance with the ritual with one being different (e.g. un-American) and thus either inferior (all of the good kids are unwavering patriots!) or an out-group threat (a traitor!). Some folks have even proposed that bullying in school is a coercive form of self-enforcement that young people engage in to uphold cultural norms.

I do not know whether they are correct in saying so, incidentally, but I still worry that the pledge promotes unconditional loyalty to the state while tacitly discouraging the free exercise of ones rights. It is somewhat contradictory to the values the nation is alleged to stand for, and that's before one even brings up the point that the United States should symbolically represent what its living citizens - not folks who died a long time ago - want it to. This is not an important issue to me but I would be pleased if the pledge were to fall into disuse. In my opinion, it is enough (and not something I'd mandate) to run the national flag up a pole outdoors on the school grounds.